Musescore: conclusions

So, that Billy Cobham transcription pretty well settled it: Musescore is a perfectly fine replacement for the soon-to-be-self-annihilating[? -tb] Finale. For my purposes: writing drumming materials, and lead sheets. 

There are a few very minor things I need to figure out, but the basic thing is solid. In a couple of weeks I'm as fast as I ever was with Finale— a lot about it is clearly better than Finale.

The whole endeavor is more orderly, with all the necessary stuff nice and visible. In Finale things are scattered under any of several menus. In Musescore of the universal style settings are under one giant menu (under format>style), and all the local style settings are instantly available under the properties tab. 

Note entry is more obscure at first, but ultimately more economical than Finale— it takes fewer keystrokes/mouse clicks to do the same thing. Editing generally is easier. It does behave surprisingly at times— better familiarity with the basic modes will help with that. 

Non-default spacing of staves is a little funny— it's done not by setting the actual width/spacing of the staff, but by adding a blank frame, which acts as a spacer. You can adjust that with the mouse, or set an exact size in the frame's properties. Not as direct as the staff size properties in Finale.  

Tuplets are great. Select the overall note value, then the type of tuplet you want to divide it into. EG, select quarter note, then triplet = eighth note triplet. Nesting tuplets is also easy, just select a note of the tuplet, and make a tuplet out of it. In Finale they're a pain, and often behave very strangely.

Not having a universal “text tool”— for just plopping a cursor anywhere— takes some getting used to, but it's fine. All text has a particular function, with a particular default placement. Musescore is more conducive to an orderly looking page. 

Some general thoughts/suggestions:

Make your template first
Using the settings under format>style decide what you want all your documents to look like, and save that in a file named template (and template_bac for when you accidentally save a change you don't want). Open the template for every new thing you're going to write, and immediately save it under the file name of whatever thing you're writing.   

Use the keyboard
You can't be doing everything with the mouse. Learn all the shortcuts for the major things you need to do. Get used to num pad = rhythm / hot keys = the notes / arrow keys = reassign notes that have no hotkey. 

And get used to hitting the esc key. In note-entering mode, it's easy to accidentally alter your score. Type some notes, hit esc to make changes to them, or to do something else.   

And the arrows, and ctrl, shift, strl-shift, alt, and shift-drag (with mouse, to select an area). And the number pad. I need to get better at navigating the document/program just with the keyboard— pointing at something with the mouse really slows things down.   

Rebuild the drum set palette
It's in a wild order as far as placing notes on a staff is concerned. So if you type in a note and then revoice it with the up/down arrow keys, you'll cycle through the instruments in this order: 

It's kind of random. Apparently the only way to fix that is to remake the entire thing:

1. Go to edit drumset.
2. Select an entry, and delete its name. 
3. Click the No. column so the entries are listed 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.
4. Fill in new instrument names starting from the bottom of the staff and ascending— of the opposite. 
5. Give the instrument a name, assign it a proper notehead, move it to the correct line on the staff, and assign it a shortcut. I put all of my stuff on the same stems, so I set everything for default voice 1, stems up. If you want bass drum/hihat pedal on separate stems, select default voice 2, stems down for them.
6. Be thorough and do them in order— anything you have to add later will appear out of order at the end of your palette. 
7. I assigned hotkeys as: A - snare, B - bass, C - crash, D - floor tom, E - high tom, F - hihat/foot, G - cymbal (I put both hihat and ride above the top line of the of the staff, and indicate one or the other with a written note. If they're both playing at the same time, I'll put one on another line however is convenient). 

That will give you a palette like this, which is much quicker when revoicing instruments up or down the staff. And also just using the key as a visual reference. 

From bottom to top— instruments on the same line separated by slash: 

Hihat with foot

Bass

Floor tom 2

Floor tom

Snare drum / rim click

Mid tom 

High tom

Higher tom

Hihat or ride / bell / misc diamond notehead / highest tom

Cymbal 2

Crash / China

Splash

WARNING: That may wreak holy hell on MIDI applications, I have no idea how it will affect that, and don't care. For now— I may come to regret that. Probably save two forms of your template— one with the default assignments intact, another with the new ones.

There you go. Onward and upward. Get Musescore here.